Silence
by Cyri's Alter Ego
Summary: Skye likes it better that way. Heavily implied Skye x Claire.


**It's spontaneous random oneshot time! Kind of a long oneshot, buuuuut... Yeah. Pairing? Skye x Claire, methinks.**

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harvest Moon. =sob= =weep= =wail=**

Silence

It was silent.

Even Grant had returned from Mineral Town hours ago. He and his teenage daughter, Kate, were both asleep in their house next to the Inner Inn. That building was noiseless, too; Ruby had long since locked the door and retired to her room, as had her son, Rock, and Nami.

Inside the house next to Grant and Kate's, Hugh turned in his bed. His mother, Chris, peeped in the door, smiling as the teenage boy murmured, "...Kate...? ...Wha...?" before turning off the light.

The light behind the door of the Harvest Sprite tree was off. The Harvest Goddess was sleeping at the bottom of her pond, undisturbed by her rival the Witch Princess, who was dreaming, mischief silenced for once, in her hut next to Romana's darkened manor.

For once, even Carter had stopped digging, and was asleep next to Flora in their tent, hands almost touching.

Forget-Me-Not Valley was almost all asleep. Nobody bothered to look at the pathway to Mineral Town. Who would be coming at this hour, in any case? The question had not even crossed anyone's mind.

But silently, under cover of the blackness that fell over the valley every night, a silver-haired man slipped into the valley, virtually melting into the shadows. He visited this place every night, but more or less no one knew of his existence.

"...If I take this path here..." The young man's forehead creased as his teal eyes darted left and right, well accustomed to the darkness. Then he froze. There was something wrong.

His first thought was that someone was awake. But, no... He was even later than he usually was, surely... _surely_...

The young man fingered some kind of object in his pocket. He could always use it if necessary... But this was different. It wasn't that he felt that somebody was watching him... It was that he felt that somebody _wasn't _watching him.

Brushing his long hair out of his eyes nervously, the young man continued along the path. Trying to take his mind off his edginess, he eyed the field full of crops that was growing nearby, contemplating taking a few. His eyes flickered towards the farmhouses on the other side of the path. _Not worth it._

There was definitely something wrong, he told himself, as he walked along the bridge, the hour nearing midnight. Something... or someone... or...

The young man stopped in his tracks, blinking. _Call yourself a phantom thief? _he asked himself silently, disgusted. _You can't even remember Claire._

She hadn't come. The young blonde farmer who usually met him at the pathway, when he came, on the dot... She hadn't come.

_I was late, _the silver-haired man reminded himself. He didn't want to admit how offended he was, or how much he looked forward to seeing her face every night. _Maybe she... she left... or..._

Flicking his hair out of his eyes and then pushing his hands deep into his pockets, the young man crossed the rest of the length of the bridge and found himself at the crossroads. Usually, after his brief meeting with Claire, he would visit the Goddess Pond, or sometimes that fancy mansion, but today...

As he was debating whether to try and find Claire at her farm, slurred shouts reached his ears. The young man took a couple of steps backwards, ready to dash for it if necessary, as a sliver of yellow light flooded out from a building nearby the well.

_The Blue Bar._ The young man tensed. He wouldn't be a welcome customer there, he knew, after stealing several bottles of their drinks in the past. The owners probably just had a couple of drunks in again...

Narrowing his eyes against the unnatural light, the silver-haired man squinted at the far-off scene. The owner, a man with long brown hair in a ponytail, was clearly kicking someone out of his bar. The dark form of the drunk slipped and stumbled to the ground. The Blue Bar's owner stormed back into the pub, followed more tentatively by a curly-haired blonde girl.

"...and _stay_ out while you're in that state!" hollered the owner, from inside.

"Griffin, are you sure-" The curly-haired girl's voice was drowned by a slamming of the door. The light vanished; valley was dark and silenced again.

_Now there's a beautiful maiden... _The young man grinned at the girl's nervousness. _I wouldn't expect her to welcome me with open arms though... _Chuckling lightly, he flicked his long hair back and started strolling down to take a look, his previous thoughts forgotten.

The dark form of the person was still slumped on the ground outside the Blue Bar. It was too dark to make the person out clearly, but the long, loose hair and slim form told the phantom thief that it was a girl.

"Ugh..."

The man was only a few feet away when the girl stirred. His heart pounding as he hovered in the dark, he realised that he recognised her.

It was Claire. A very, very, drunk Claire.

This set the young man's mind whirring. Claire hardly ever drank. He wouldn't get an opportunity close to this again... If she wouldn't remember this in the morning... The young man smirked, feeling naughty.

Crawling to a tree and holding onto a low-hanging branch for support, Claire stumbled to a standing position. She glanced around blearily, her rucksack almost falling off her shoulder. Her unfocused, blue eyes met the young man's for a moment. A flicker of recognition touched them.

"Skye...?" she mumbled drunkenly. "W-wha... wh... wh..."

Meanwhile, Skye was wrestling with an unusual wave of emotion that had swept him when Claire looked into his eyes. Shaking himself, he flicked his hair out of his face again. "That's me," he whispered simply. "Skye the phantom thief."

Claire's next words were so garbled that Skye couldn't make them out properly, but the next thing he knew, the blonde had left her tree and stumbled into him, quite literally.

"Whoa!" Just in time, Skye flung out his arms to break the drunk farmer's fall. She didn't seem capable of supporting her own body weight, and simply stared up at him, blue eyes huge and vague. She let out a giggle.

"You're funny," she murmured, a half-smile playing around her lips. "And pretty..."

"Your beauty diminishes mine," replied Skye, a tiny smile gracing his features. This wasn't Claire as she was usually. She couldn't ever had said that in her usual state without blushing furiously. "You're a danger to yourself, Claire."

The girl looked mildly confused. "I don' _feel_ li' a danger t'm'self..." she mumbled, words slurring together.

Skye shook his head. "It's bad for your skin to stay out so late." His breath next to Claire's ear disturbed a lock of hair. "In fact, it's bad for your health to be drinking. It's not very ladylike, you know." He smirked.

Giving a weak stamp of her foot, Claire announced, "I don' wanna be ladylike."

"That's just too bad, because I'm going to take you back to your farm," Skye whispered into Claire's ear.

"Uh..." Claire groaned, her head flopping onto Skye's chest, but she did not object.

"What the...?"

Skye's head snapped around as light poured out of the Blue Bar's doorway again. The curly-haired blonde girl was standing in the doorway, an expression of disbelief on her face.

"I came to see if Claire was alright... But..." She blinked. "You're that thief! You..." Trepidation crept onto her face. "What is that?"

"A maiden as beautiful as you shouldn't be interfering," Skye smirked, his voice smooth. He clutched Claire with his remaining arm. "It pains me to strike you down like this, charming woman as you are, but... Chick-beam... _fire_!"

There was a flash of light. Skye's secret weapon - his maiden chick-beam - had struck it's mark. The curly-haired girl was immobilised, and too stunned to say a word.

Skye started to half-drag Claire away, smirking at the other girl's thunderous expression. He turned my head to her and dared a wink.

"Thanks for covering for us, beautiful."

***

Skye still wasn't sure what Claire wanted. He was sure that he had done everything right; he had taken her to her farmhouse, put her to bed so that she could sleep the drink off... The only fact was, she wouldn't _stay _in bed.

"Summaf'you," she muttered inaudibly.

"Say again?" The phantom thief blinked.

"Summaf'you," Claire insisted, standing up once again and stumbling unevenly to the other end of her farmhouse.

Glancing at his watch, Skye saw with some anxiety that it was past one. He liked to be out of the valley by five am, and it didn't look like Claire was planning on letting him leave any time soon.

"Alright," Skye sighed, sitting down on a chair. He was trying to think straight, but there was a very distracting scent of curry coming from Claire's fridge... Which Claire was heading towards.

Claire grappled with the handle of her fridge for at least ten seconds before it flew open and bounced straight off her forehead with a loud _bang_. Skye half-rose from his chair.

"That's even worse for your skin," he warned, but Claire didn't seem to hear. She soldiered on, rummaging inside her fridge, seemingly immune to the heavy object that had just crashed into her skull.

With some apprehension, Skye waited for Claire to finish searching for whatever it was she so desperately wanted. He glanced out of the window; he could just make out the towering silhouette of Claire's animal barn.

"You."

Skye jumped. He hadn't noticed Claire make her unsteady way back over to him from the fridge. She was holding a porcelain bowl out in front of her, staring as intently as she could in her circumstances. She clearly intended him to take it.

In doing so, Skye almost forgot to look at what was in the bowl, so distracted was he by Claire.

The farmer blinked. Skye blushed.

"Your beauty sidetracked me, I'm afraid..." the silver-haired man murmured, before glancing down at what Claire had given him and tearing off the foil covering it. And he stared.

_It's not... God, it's not... It is... It's not... Oh, God. How the hell...? Oh, dear God._

The scent of Claire's perfectly made Finest Curry wafted around Skye. He breathed in deeply. Finest Curry. Dear God, sometimes he thought he lived for that stuff.

Looking up again, Skye saw that Claire was still staring at him, swaying on the spot.

"Mmm?" _Well? _she seemed to be asking.

Skye stood up. He was not that much taller than Claire "Claire..." the thief murmured, eyes fixed thoughtfully on the ground.

Claire giggled tipsily, turned, and fell onto her bed.

"I should think so, too," Skye said softly, footsteps quiet on the wooden floorboards. He opened the door, glancing back once at Claire's now-silent form.

Silent, like the rest of Forget-Me-Not Valley. Skye liked it better that way. But he did allow three words to fall into the stillness before he took his leave.

"...You are radiant."


End file.
